Michael Madigan's epitaph: The next few years write the verdict

Whether Madigan fixes his Illinois debacle will determine his career success or failure.

The lion in winter approaches his 46th year in the Illinois House. Yet three times this autumn, one surely infuriating risk of his speakership has embarrassed Michael Madigan: His supermajority caucus of 71 Democrats is only as strong as any renegade representative, in this case Ken Dunkin of Chicago, decides it will be.

Each time, Madigan failed to humiliate Gov. Bruce Rauner, a man with whom he shares intensity and tenacity, by overriding a Rauner veto. In last week's episode, Madigan was less intent on assuring child care support — the governor already had conceded many of the points at issue to other Democrats — than he was in bludgeoning Rauner with an override. But Dunkin, saying he had been part of the deal with the governor, refused to enable what he later called Madigan's "vindictive" override. That left the speaker with 70 votes, shy of the necessary 71.

Rauner came away posturing as the compromiser who could cut deals. And Madigan? Many working-class families had a child-care solution, but he had played no role in brokering it. All eyes had turned to Dunkin, who brazenly told Chicago's WLS-TV, "I am not a puppet for Mike Madigan, for the governor. ... The facts are people are sick and tired of us down in Springfield who are under the thumb of Mike Madigan."

When he someday leaves the House, political obituaries will invoke "powerful House Speaker Michael Madigan." That reflexive five-word cliche has appeared in the Tribune at least 76 times, not counting many nearly identical phrasings. But "powerful" and "admired" aren't synonyms. What will be his epitaph — history's verdict of success or failure? Will Madigan's grandchildren eventually read that he is scorned for Illinois' collapse, or respected for its restoration?

Scott Stantis

Scott Stantis

Madigan surely appreciates that the next few years, not the last 45, will define him. Just as he appreciates the incarnate threat to the empire he built. That's why he's so vividly engaged in this year's war for the future of Illinois.

Madigan has grappled with other governors. Never, though, has Madigan faced a foe such as Rauner with such an antithetical vision — a governor whose essential message is: You and your friends methodically ruined Illinois. Your Springfield serves only your loyal serfs. That's wrong.

Never has Madigan faced a doppelganger who, as he does, plays the long game. Madigan plots years ahead to maintain his caucus, his speakership. Rauner's distant but similarly focused goals are to streamline a sclerotic government and revive a moribund economy.

And, of course, never has Madigan faced wealth able to challenge and likely outspend his campaign apparatus. Madigan needs allies' money and muscle more than Rauner does.

Madigan's way served him well, until it didn't. Early on he turned union leaders and other groups upon whom he relied into supplicants who relied on him. Decade upon decade, though, Madigan and others — often Republicans — overextended Illinois taxpayers' ability to pay for all the spending, the borrowing, the patronage, the pensions. He didn't foresee the force vectors that eventually would slam Illinois: the Rust Belt recessions, the enduring lure of the Sunbelt for companies and workers, the enormous compounding cost of sustaining the industry he had expanded — government in Illinois. Madigan didn't intend to diminish Illinois and despoil its finances. But that happened.

Can Madigan help rescue Illinois and redeem his state's deep plummet on his long watch? Win or lose, his every bold gesture suggests his determination not to let Illinois government, like that of Michigan or Wisconsin, slide from blue to red. He now holds more caucus meetings to consolidate his members and plan the battles ahead. He's a more provocative presence on TV, although his robotic repetitions — "middle class," "extreme" — sound practiced, not from the heart.

Madigan now must decide whether he'll be recalled for his feared clout or for how he used it to deliver solutions. His career is a model of discipline, honed in high school at St. Ignatius, in college at Notre Dame, in law school at Loyola. Look at his signature on the Illinois House Democrats' website: the crisp, patient penmanship his elementary teachers must have admired, not in the illegible I'm-important-and-I'm-in-a-hurry slashes of so many Americans who've made it.

But against another disciplined actor, who knows? Remember that in the past Madigan could send incomplete or out-of-whack budgets to governors (Rod Blagojevich, Pat Quinn) who would comply and make it all work. But Rauner wouldn't be Madigan's safety net. Twice he has confronted Democrats with their severely unbalanced annual spending plans. Each time that has left the meticulous Madigan looking ... undisciplined.

We offer no prediction as to how Madigan resolves his dilemma — power politics or overdue solutions? — or what epitaph he now will write.

A version of this article appeared in print on November 15, 2015, in the News section of the Chicago Tribune with the headline "Success or failure? The next few years, not the last 45, will write this verdict." —
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